Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania
폴란드왕국·리투아니아 사회민주당
A Marxist party founded in Russian Poland in 1893 by activists who rejected the Polish Socialist Party’s programme of independence. Originally called the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland (SDKP), it took its later name after merging with Social Democrats in Lithuania. It put revolution across the Russian Empire ahead of Polish independence, and Rosa Luxemburg was its leading theoretician. From 1906 it was an autonomous section of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, and in December 1918 it merged with the Polish Socialist Party–Left to form the Communist Workers’ Party of Poland.
In depth
The party was founded in 1893 as the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland (SDKP) by members of the Union of Polish Workers and the Second Proletariat who rejected the decisions of the Paris congress that created the Polish Socialist Party (PPS), above all its demand for Polish independence. According to the Polish-language source, it aimed at an internationalist workers’ revolution that would abolish capitalism and nation states and establish proletarian rule, and it was reluctant or hostile towards independence movements and cooperation with peasant organisations. At the International Socialist Congress that year the Polish delegation led by Ignacy Daszyński opposed seating Luxemburg and Marchlewski, and at the 1896 congress Luxemburg clashed over independence with Józef Piłsudski of the PPS.
Mass arrests in 1896 effectively halted the SDKP. In 1899 Felix Dzerzhinsky, who had escaped from Siberian exile, brought together former SDKP activists in Warsaw and Social Democrats in Lithuania to found the SDKPiL in Vilnius. The English-language source dates the merger to 1899; the Polish-language source dates the new name from 1900. The Second Congress, held at Otwock in 1900, adopted an all-Russian democratic constitution and national autonomy within a democratic Russia as basic demands. In 1902 the émigré leadership around Luxemburg took control of the party and entrusted the organisation at home to Dzerzhinsky.
At the Second Congress of the RSDLP in 1903 the SDKPiL delegation demanded autonomy within the party and the removal of the right of nations to self-determination from its programme. During the 1905 Revolution the party was a leading organisation in Russian Poland; unlike the PPS, which took a pro-Japanese stance, it was defeatist towards the Tsarist state, and it worked closely with the Bund and the PPS Left. Membership grew from about 120 in 1904 (Polish-language source) to 40,000 in 1906, of whom 70% were Polish, 25% German and 5% Jewish. At the Stockholm Congress in April 1906 it entered the RSDLP while keeping broad internal autonomy, and at the London Congress of 1907 Jogiches and Warski were elected to the united Central Committee.
After the revolution ebbed, conflict over Jogiches’s authoritarian leadership led the Warsaw Committee, headed by Unszlicht and others, to break with the central leadership in 1911. When war broke out in 1914 both factions took an internationalist position and joined the Zimmerwald movement, and they reunited at a congress on 4 November 1916. After 1917 Dzerzhinsky, Radek and Hanecki took part in the October Revolution and held posts in the Soviet government, while Luxemburg and Jogiches led the Communist Party of Germany. In December 1918 the SDKPiL merged with the PPS Left to found the Communist Workers’ Party of Poland, later the Communist Party of Poland.